


Follow My Lead

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [210]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Weddings, Where Period Homophobia is Not A Thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 03:32:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17113646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: “We’re dating.”“What? No, we’re not.”“For the purposes of this job,” Tony says, his fingers fast in Steve’s, “we sure as hell are.”





	Follow My Lead

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Fake/pretend relationship AND this truly terrible movie called "Christmas Wedding Planner," which I cannot unrecommend strongly enough.

“We’re dating.”

“What? No, we’re not.”

“For the purposes of this job,” Tony says, his fingers fast in Steve’s, “we sure as hell are.”

“Don’t you think we should’ve discussed this in advance?”

“Why? So you could’ve freaked out for longer? I don’t think so.”

“I’m not freaking out!”

“Really?” Tony turns to him, gives him that suave _trust me_ smile Steve’s seen him throw at clients a thousand times. “Your face usually turns red when in you’re in a beautiful room filled with beautiful people on the arm of the person you love?”

Steve nearly chokes. “The person I--!”

He sees heads swivel, he sees eyebrows raised, he sees a big table full of gifts he’d really like to hide behind. But he can’t move, can’t go anywhere, damn it, because his boss is holding his hand in a grip akin to iron and pulling away will only foster a scene and the whole point of this gig is to fade into the background and have nobody notice and fuck if Steve’s gonna be the one to mess the thing up. He’d heard Mrs. Melbourne in Tony’s office two weeks before, heard the amount she’d offered him to see if her son-in-law was the gold digger he seemed and boy howdy, was he; a few out of state phone calls and a telefax or two and Tony had the proof spread out on his desk, beaming like a proud papa.

“See?” he’d said when Steve brought in the mail and Tony’s five o’clock somewhere. “Mother-in-laws get a bad rap but they’ve got the best instincts this side of a bloodhound. Young Miss Melbourne managed to find her a real weaselly son-of-a-bitch. Look at this, blondie: bad checks in six states, an ex-wife in Houston, two warrants out in Reno and one--look at this--all the way out in Miami.” He chuckled, beamed at Steve through his drink. “Weasley and stupid. The best kind.”

But the wrinkle--and there was always a wrinkle, in Tony’s kind of work--was that for all her sixth sense, Mrs. Melbourne didn’t want to be the one to break her daughter’s blind heart. She’d tried and tried (or so she’d told Tony), but she just couldn’t make the words come out of her mouth.

“It’s because Mabel looks so happy,” she’d said the day before, sniffling over the line. “She thinks she has the world on a string, poor dear. I haven’t seen her smile like this since her father died, and I”--a sob, a shudder of tears that Steve (listening in) had had a hard time squaring with the square-shouldered certainty she’d worn when storming Tony’s office--“I can’t bring myself to smash her dreams again, Mr. Stark, no matter how much it’s warranted.”

“Ma’am, I know that it’s difficult, but think of the heartache you’d be saving her from, truly, if you keep her and her money out of the clutches of this guy.”

A wail on the other end of the line. “I know! I know, but I simply can’t--”

“Tell you what,” Tony had said. “How about you let me?”

Which was how they’d ended up here at the St. Albans supper club an hour before the nuptials, dressed to the nines. That he’d been asked to come along at all had been a surprise; he could count on one hand the jobs Tony had asked for his help with over the past two years, beyond the filing/phoning/greeting visitors kind.

“I need another pair of eyes with me,” was what he’d said in the past, seating himself at the edge of Steve’s little desk, serious. “And yours, Mr. Rogers, are the sharpest I know.”

It was true he knew everything about everybody, each detail of Tony’s every case. That was his job, he figured, to have it all at his command so when Tony asked for something--nice over the intercom or bellowing from behind his desk--Steve could have it for him, forthwith. So he’d taken it as a compliment those few times before when Mr. Stark--Tony--had asked him to come along for the ride.

But this? This is the first time that being backup’s required a new wardrobe. Much less the, um, pretend boyfriends thing.

“How does this help us, exactly?” he whispers, trying to keep his face placid.

“What?”

Steve squeezes Tony’s hand just this side of too tight. “ _This_.”

“Oh! This? Simple: it makes us look not like a threat.”

It takes Steve a second. “You mean, it makes us look unthreatening?”

Tony laughs, this low, coy thing that makes Steve want to shake him. “Yes, girl Friday. That.”

“How?”

A waiter breezes by and Tony snags two flutes of champagne, lets go of Steve long enough to let him take one. “Imagine,” Tony says, swirling his at the assembled, “that you’re a friend of the lovely Miss Melbourne. You know that the elder Melbourne is none too keen on this wedding; for all her hesitation of the last day or so, I suspect she’s made that clear in general terms to her daughter, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Mmm. So. Imagine you’re one of the girl’s pretty little friends and you see me alone wandering around this lovely place all alone, peeking in doors, asking questions, and generally being a handsome but undeniably sore thumb in this set up. Would your feminine hackles not go up like a porcupine’s hide?”

Steve takes a sip of champagne and chews on the inside of his cheek. “I mean, when you put it like that, I guess--yes.”

“Ah!” Tony strings an arm through his and beams, that familiar, alcohol-driven shine. “But imagine if you will, Steven, that you are the same pretty little friend and you see, instead of a single sore thumb, a set of two--and at weddings, my dear, it’s single people who get all the attention. Couples are generally expected to gaze about with something like smug: been there, as it were, done that. Not gotten married, necessarily, but managed to find someone to pair off with to fight through the battles of life.”

“So how are you planning to use our relative anonymity, then? To sneak around and locate the bride?”

“Eh,” Tony says. “Maybe.”

Steve blinks. He knows that tone. That look, too--devil-may-care cut through with a twinkle. Trouble, both of them. “Tony,” he says, ducking his head so he can whisper, so he can hide the fierceness in his hiss, “you are planning on telling her before the wedding, aren’t you? You’re not going to cause a scene at the ceremony, right?”

Tony smiles at him, champagne and cigarettes. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Tony, no! Oh my god, you can’t do that, you’ll--!”

And then the world, the St. Albans, the whole Upper West Side, goes sideways because Tony’s hand is on the back of his neck and Tony’s mouth is on his, warm and sure, and it goes on just long enough for Steve to catch on and not panic and then Tony’s smiling at him again, a sly little fox of a grin.

“Trust me,” Tony says softly. “That’s all you need to do. Trust me and follow my lead.”

**Author's Note:**

> Two for one shot today--wrote most of this MM and then had a tangent idea based on it (thanks, brain); I'll post said tangent as the next fic in this series.


End file.
